Statement by
Under Secretary Robert P. Patterson on Responsibility forMilitary
Procurement Before the Senate Special Committee Investigatingthe National Defense Program,
77th Congress, 2d Session, 16 December 1942

What I have said raises a
second point the control of production of weapons by the armed
forces. There has been confusion in the minds of many people on this
subject. It is incorrectly assumed that the armed forces are not now
engaged in the procurement of weapons and that they want to take
this function away from other agencies. There is also the absurd
belief on the part of some that the armed forces desire to control
and regiment the American economy. How that story started I do not
know.

Since the American
Revolution, the Army and the Navy have been in charge of production
of their weapons. The War Production Board is mobilizing the
resources, facilities and materials (raw and semi-finished)
necessary to such production and necessary also to civilian
activities. It likewise allocates and controls the flow of materials
so as to resolve conflicting demands of the Army, Navy, Maritime
Commission, and other agencies and to adjust the program to
available resources. A similar arrangement worked well in the last
war. The Army and Navy have now experienced two years of successful
operation under the arrangement. I believe in its continuance. We
are not seeking new fields of endeavor.

The functions of the War
Department and Navy Department on production of weapons cover the
entire range of production anddistribution.
They include strategic and tactical planning, experiment, design,
selection of types to be produced, obtaining funds from Congress,
procurement (partly by orders to Government plants and partly by
contracts to private industry), scheduling follow-up of production
inspection, delivery, provision of spare parts, distribution, and
field maintenance. I could add to that, and finally, salvage. These
are phases in a continuous operation from drafting board to scrap
pile. Changes dictated by demands from the fighting forces are
constantly made. Programs are readjusted while manufacture is in
process. Research and preparation of specifications overlap
production and change the course of production. Military testing and
inspection occur simultaneously with manufacture. Battle experience
must reach the production line with minimum delay.

Tactical developments in
the Aleutians created an urgent necessity for a change in bomb
fuses. The fuses, while satisfactory for high altitude or dive
bombing, were not adapted to the new type of bombing required. An
ordnance officer was flown to the Aleutians and participated in
bombing attacks. He flew back to Picatinny Arsenal and designed a
new fuse for this particular requirement. He supervised
production-line changes, flew back with the first units produced,
and there supervised the trials and the

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instruction of others in
the use' of fuses in battle. This is one instance out of a great
many, which indicates that production of weapons is not a process
that can be broken up into separate compartments for separate
control by separate agencies.

For maximum effectiveness
the stages of production must be under direction of the same agency
as to each type of weapon. Experience has shown that where
successive stages or production are under control of separate
agencies the results are not the best. It does not work well to
place procurement (making of contracts) in another agency. The
operation is a single continuous one. Duality of control will not
work.

The officers of the armed
forces are the persons best fitted by experience to direct the
production of weapons. They have spent years in turning out rifles,
artillery, cruisers, and so forth. They know by direct contact with
troops on the fighting fronts what weapons are needed by the troops.
They have the background to decide where manufacture can best be
carried on, whether in Army arsenals, Navy shipyards, or private
industrial plants. They have been engaged for years in surveying
industrial plants and in instructing them in military production
needed in the event of war. They know what steps must be taken to
make sure that the weapons when manufactured will function as
intended. They know from experience that the lives of American
soldiers depend upon the accuracy of a rifle and the correct timing
of a shell.

Many civilians with
technical skills and industrial backgrounds have been taken into the
armed services to assist the Regular officers in solving the many
problems presented. But it would have been impossible to create and
continue in efficient action our Army without the framework of
Regular Army officers especially trained in the productionof
weapons. No civilian agency of the Government has had experience in
meeting the infinite variety of problems involved in production of
weapons. No man who was not trained through years for the work could
go to Libya, as did an ordnance officer, and participate in battle
with our tanks being used by the British against Rommel. As a result
of his experience, he not only changed the system for supply and
maintenance of armored forces, but also went to work designing and
supervising production of our newer tanks.

On the other hand, control
of materials is properly placed in a civilian agency, the War
Production Board. In the first place, the officers of the armed
services are not as well qualified to handle production and
distribution of steel, copper, and other materials as men from these
industries. Their experience in time of peace, while ample in
directing production of weapons, does not extend to directing
production of materials. In peace the Army and Navy requirements for
steel and copper are so modest that the supply of such requirements
raises no difficulty. In the second place, the Army and Navy demands
for materials such as copper, steel, and aluminum, while of great
importance, are not the sole demands for these materials. The
railroads, the mining industry, the machine-tool industry, and other
industrial activities essential to the war effort also need these
materials. Control of the supply of these materials is properly
placed under a civilian agency.

The function of the
civilian agencies who are called in to aid the Army and Navy in time
of war, as I see it, is to provide an increased supply of critical
materials, the facilities for the production of semi-finished
products required for military end-items, the administrative control
of the flow of materials

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and the elimination of
these materials for nonessential purposes. They can be of assistance
to the services in other ways as well. They are also charged with
the duty of continuing civilian supply necessary to support the war
effort. Among the duties of such agencies are priority and price
control, allocation of facilities, control of raw materials and
other commodities, control of labor

supply, power and fuel,
transportation, finance, and foreign trade.

There is no thought that
the military departments should control American economy. It is
essential merely that the armed forces procure munitions which they
alone are able to procure, while civilian agencies direct the
economy of the country to assist and make possible such procurement.